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My Sunday Photo: What’s new, Pussycat?

You know Halloween is approaching when your Instagram feed fills up with photos of bloggers’ kids in pumpkin patches …

Kara has outgrown last year’s pumpkin costume, so yesterday Heather went out shopping in search of a replacement for her to go out trick-or-treating in. She returned with the perfect item: a cat outfit that would probably also pass muster as a Catwoman costume. She’s quite taken with it.

When did Halloween become such a commercial money-making machine? Walk in to any supermarket and you’re bombarded with shelf after shelf of seasonal product as far as the eye can see: pumpkins, costumes, multipacks of sweets, buckets – if it can be painted black-and-orange, it’s for sale. Come October 31st, the streets will be flooded with excited, sugar-fuelled kids seeking to fill their boots (and buckets) with confectionery goodies.

It wasn’t always that way. But in the last 15 years or so, the UK has followed the US in turning Halloween into a major calendar event. For retailers, it conveniently fills a gaping hole in their promotional calendar between Back To School and Christmas. For kids, it’s something to enjoy just as the long nights start to draw in.

Anyhow, Kara’s new outfit gives me an excuse (albeit a tenuous one) to roll out this classic Tom Jones song. Just because.

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40Comments

Love Kara’s pussycat outfit and the photo with her as a pumpkin is adorable. Halloween has definitely become a big thing now although we tend not to do very much other than perhaps just carve a pumpkin.

I must say I really like Halloween. Going trick or treating (only to people we know, of course!) with the kids is a highlight of the autumn for me. My photo this week is also of my daughter in her new Halloween costume!

I love this she looks so cute, and look at the difference a year can make wow. Do you know we live in the middle of nowhere and since moving I have really missed excited kids knocking trick or treating x

It’s quite nice where we are now where it’s mostly organised groups of smaller kids. Where we used to live we used to be besieged by teenagers who could get quite menacing at times – I don’t miss that at all!

She’s really shot up since last year hasn’t she? And that costume is so perfect on her! We get a bunch of local kids knocking on our door and one year we gave them biscuits because we didn’t have any treats and they were so polite, oops 🙂

Here in the US, Halloween started right as Labor Day hit the calendar, officially ending summer. It was crazy. We still had on bathing suits and were searching for sunscreen. Not too many steps away, christmas ornaments already were on the shelves. What the ??? Too early, too soon. How can we stay present when all they want us to do is buy presents now for later.
Crazy.

Ah I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to spot all the pumpkin picking photos on Instagram!! I kinda feel left out for not going! 😂

Love her costume! Although she did look pretty cute as a pumpkin.

Whilst I enjoy seeing the kids in costumes I’ll admit I can’t stand Halloween. The main reason for me is that I worry about my Nain vein targeted by kids. She lives on her own and is in her 80s to have people at the door in scary outfits. It’s not just kids that come out tricking in her town.

We had similar issues in our old house, where we had lots of pretty rough teenagers coming round later in the evening and chucking eggs and the like at houses who wouldn’t open up. We would just go out for dinner but a couple of our neighbours were quite elderly and felt genuinely threatened on Halloween, all because a few errant teens wouldn’t take no for an answer in their quest for freebie sweets.

I like how it is in the US where it always seems to have a real family feel to it and people really go to town with some of their costumes and decorations. Here it sometimes feels like it’s just about the sweets.